The Meaning of Romance
by Sherry Marie
Summary: A romance novelist deals with writer's block and thinks on the nature of his art. Wow, that's a bad summary. Please read this anyway and review!


1 The Meaning of Romance  
  
  
  
Yuki's fingers hit the small black marked keys of his laptop issuing an almost lulling rhythm that seemed to reach out to fill even the furthest corners in his sparingly decorated office with their hypnotic meter. He always wrote quickly but almost subconsciously, the words that rapidly filled the glowing screen seemed to pass through the labor of his fingers without cognitive effort.  
  
That was why when he would pause from time to time to read over what he had been writing, most of those characters would be swallowed by the backspace key and dismissed as drivel. Not that the romance writer didn't consider all of the contents in his books to be essentially drivel, but he understood that there was trash that belonged in the trashcan and trash that belonged in the hands of a needy housewife or a lonely teenaged girl.  
  
He paused now, and took a long drag on his cigarette tasting the sharp sting of nicotine on his tongue with satisfaction, while his finger held down the delete key erasing the previous two paragraphs that he had just written. Tonight he was having trouble coming up with anything worth keeping, and with a deadline approaching and less than half of the novel completed, he was beginning to get irritated with his seemingly absent muse.  
  
He decided to take a break for a few minutes in the hopes that the muse in question, being the fickle and manipulative bitch that he knew her to be, would mistake his break for quitting and try to slip back unnoticed. He reclined in a perceptively impossible position given the flimsy construction of his office chair and stared at the ceiling. He considered taking a drink from the can of beer on his desk, but dismissed the notion guessing the contents to be lukewarm from sitting untouched for some time.  
  
Distantly, he could hear the muffled beats of repetitive pop music from beyond the locked door of his office. Without needing to walk out and see it, he could visualize Shuichi sitting on the large leather L-shaped black couch in the living room with his slender legs tucked beneath him leaning forward as the images on the TV reflected in the deep violet of his wide- set eyes.  
  
The singer had bounced into their home earlier that evening with his arms full, prattling on in an almost ever-present state of excitement about some new music DVDs that he had purchased. Yuki, already in a fouler mood than usual due to his on-going writer's block, did his best to ignore the youth. He had walked into his office and locked it with an overly vicious flick of his wrist while his pink-haired lover was in mid-sentence.  
  
He knew that he was being particularly vindictive with Shuichi tonight, knowing as he did that his lover preferred being yelled at over being ignored. The abrupt dismissal had its expected devastating effect, and it was sometime before the boy had given up tearfully yelling "Yuki!" through the closed door and went away to sulk.  
  
If he thought too hard about his treatment of the singer, then he would start to feel just the slightest bit of guilt, and would entertain fleeting thoughts of going out to smooth things over. But the guilt always vanished giving way to anger and annoyance at being made to feel bad, so the regret would wind up morphing into a sort of vindication of his behavior towards the intrusive teenager.  
  
He mentally shook himself away from pondering his lover, and tried to direct his attention back to the unfinished draft he had been working on rather unsuccessfully. He straightened up from his slouch and took a minute to look at what he had been writing, but he could not bring himself to get re-interested in the developing storyline. Instead, the flashing curser on the flat laptop screen seemed to taunt him with the unfilled space in front of it.  
  
Squelching his misdirected anger for the machine, he pulled out another cigarette in an attempt to calm his nerves. He always smoked more when he was writing, and Shuichi always complained about this asking him to * please * try and cut down, and Yuki, always, ignored the pestering.  
  
Granted, he found himself smoking less while in the youth's company, but he liked telling himself that it was merely an effort to halt some of the persistent nagging.  
  
He stared at the screen with a look of disgust tightening his features. He was barely halfway though the novel, and already he despised the characters that he had created. The main heroine was particularly taxing to him, even though she was his creation, even though his hand dictated her words and actions.  
  
But that, however, was not completely true. While it was the romance novelist Yuki Eiri that had brought the fictitious woman into being, it was the thousands upon thousands of desperate and romantically delusional women and girls that bought his books that truly dictated how his characters behaved within the pages of the novel. He wrote for them, or more accurately, for their money. They demanded an escape from their daily lives, and were more than willing to pay the inflated cover price for his books to attain it.  
  
His books were every bit as ridiculous as the women who bought them, and that was the very key to the writer's success. He learned long ago what formula of characters and storyline sold, and had been implementing it in different variations repetitively in his string of novels.  
  
The heroine was always a facet of the everyday girl, but polished and given greater courage and greater beauty, everything that his readers desired for themselves. The main hero was often brash, always impeccably handsome, and always mysterious.  
  
The crux of his novels revolved around the heroine being drawn in uncontrollably by this air of mystery, and through various series of events wrought with danger and multiple female orgasms, worked to unlock the mystery of her man. And unlock it she did, and the hero would thus fall devoutly and forever in love with her. They would live in compete and utter understanding and love for the rest of their days.  
  
It was utter garbage.  
  
Yuki knew, as his readers did not, why exactly they were always reading about love in the pages of his novels and never experiencing it for themselves. It wasn't that he thought all of the women who read his books lived solitary existences; on the contrary, he knew that a great number of his readers had husbands and boyfriends. So why did they escape to his books?  
  
It was disappointment, pure and simple, for what they had in their lives verses what they thought they should have. And that was perhaps the most pathetic thing in the world as far as Yuki was concerned.  
  
These women were always disappointed in their romances, because they did not understand what love was. They thought they saw it in the pages of his novels, which is why they eagerly traded their hard-earned money for a book of fabrication. Yuki served them deception and delusion because they fervently asked for it.  
  
They wanted love to be what it is not, perfection, understanding, and eternal happiness. They wanted the cliché ending in his stories, and would never be satisfied with anything less. And that was why these women would be forever discontented with their lives, because they could not or would not see that what he sold them was a lie, a misrepresentation of love.  
  
It would be impossible for the writer to portray real love within the pages of his books, because real love, true love, is something that is beyond words and actions, above displays and explanations.  
  
It does not swoop down to solve life's problems or vanquish painful memories. It does not guarantee understanding or happiness, as it is often confusing and frustrating.  
  
Love is impatient and unkind. It is hurtful and curt.  
  
It is loud, obnoxious, overly tearful, and foolish.  
  
Love is intrusive and irritating. It closes the door in your face, and love sticks a foot in the door to keep it open.  
  
Love deceives.  
  
Love runs away, but is always pursued.  
  
It is fiercely protective. It will seek out vengeance and retribution.  
  
Love puts on a horrible dress and pushes for truth. It tells secrets, dark dark secrets, and remains.  
  
Love is good for you and bad for you, right and wrong, helpful and hindering. It is everything.  
  
Love is beyond understanding, but blindly understood.  
  
Yuki Eiri pressed the save button and pushed down the screen of his laptop computer. He was through with fiction for the night. He unlocked the door of his office, walked out into the now dark living room, and went to wake Shuichi on the couch. 


End file.
